The Amnesia Of Hermione Granger
by siriuslyholly
Summary: When Hermione wakes up in St Mungo's, she has no idea what has happened during the last nine years of her life. She doesn't remember that her parents divorced, who her friends are, or if she has a boyfriend. When she starts piecing her life together, it's soon clear that she may not want to be united with her past quite as she left it. Inspired by Memoirs Of A Teenage Amnesiac.
1. prologue

Above all, mine is a love story.

And like most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, and a dash of head trauma.

It began with a coin toss.

The coin came up tails; I was heads.

Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter or sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would have had the faintest whisper of love about it, but maybe not.

Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.


	2. i was: one

If things had been different, I'd be called Nataliya or Natasha, and I'd have a Russian accent and chapped lips all year round. Maybe I'd even be a child of the street who would trade you just about anything for a pair of blue jeans. But I am not Nataliya or Natasha, because at eight weeks old I was delivered from Kratovo, Moscow Oblast, to Sussex, England. I don't remember the trip or even having lived in Russia at all. What I know about my orphanhood is limited to what I've been told, which was sketchy at best: A week old baby girl was found in an empty typewriter case in the second-to-last pew of an Eastern Orthodox Church. Was the case a clue to my biological father's profession? Did the church mean my birth mother was devout? I'll never know, so I choose not to speculate. Besides, I hate orphan stories. They're all the same, but most books are bursting with them anyway.

I can't remember a time when I didn't know I was adopted. There was never a dramatic "we have something to tell you" talk. My adoption was simply another fact, like having light brown hair and no siblings. I knew I was adopted even before I knew what that truly meant. Understanding adoption requires a basic understanding of sex, something I would not have until year five when Kayleigh Paddock brought in her grandparent's disturbingly dog-eared copy of The Joy Of Sex to primary school. She passed it around at lunch and while everyone else was gagging with the realisation that their parents had done that to them (so much hair, and the people in the drawings were not one bit joyful), I felt perfectly fine, even a little smug. I might be adopted, but at least my parents hadn't degraded themselves like that for my sake.

You're probably wondering why they didn't do it the old-fashioned way. Not that it's any of your business, but they tried for a year without getting anywhere. After about a year, Mum and Dad decided that, rather than investing about a million pounds in fertility treatments that might not work anyway, it would be better to spend the money on helping a forgotten child like me. This is why you are not, at the moment, reading the inspiring true account of a Kratovan orphan called Nataliya or Natasha, who, things being different, might be called Hannah or Hermione.

Truth is, I rarely think about any of this. I'm only telling you this now because, in a way, I was born to be an amnesiac. I have always been required to fill in the blanks.

But I'm definitely getting ahead of myself.

When he heard about my (for lack of a better term) accident, my best friend, Harry, who I'd completely forgotten at the time, wrote me a letter. (I didn't come across it immediately because he had slipped it inside the sleeve of my robes.) He had inherited a beautiful feathered quill from his godfather Sirius, and he enjoyed writing me letters, even when it would have been much easier to Floo Call or visit.

I should tell you that the following dispatch, while being the only record of events leading up to my accident, does not really convey much of Harry's personality. It was completely unlike him to be so formal, stiff, boring even. You do get some sense of him from his footnotes, but half of you won't bother with those anyway. I know I didn't. At the time, I felt about footnotes nearly the same as I did about orphan stories.

_Chief: _

_ The first thing you should know about me is that I remember everything. And the second thing is that I'm probably the most honest person in the world. I realise you can't trust anyone who says they're honest, and knowing this, I wouldn't usually tell you something like that about myself. I'm only telling you now because it's something I feel you should know. _

_In an attempt to make myself useful to you, I have assembled a timeline of the events leading up to your accident, which you may or may not find helpful, but you will find below. _

_6.36p.m__. Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, co-chiefs of the award-winning__1__Auror Office leaves the offices of the Ministry Of Magic. _

_6.45p.m. __Granger and Potter arrive at the exit of the Ministry of Magic, Granger realises they have left an important artefact back at the office. _

_6.46p.m.__ Discussion__2__ ensues regarding who should have to return to the office to retrieve the artefact Potter suggests settling the matter with a muggle coin toss__3__,a preposition which Granger accepts. Potter says that he should be heads, but Granger states__4__ that she should be heads. Potter concedes, but as oft happens, Potter flips the coin, and Granger loses. _

_6.53p.m.__ Granger returns to the Auror Office, Potter Floos home. _

_7.02p.m.__5__(approx) Granger arrives at the Auror Office where she retrieves the artefact. _

_7.06p.m.__(approx) Granger falls down the interior main steps of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Granger strikes head on bottom step, but manages to hold onto the artefact__6__. Granger is discovered by Draco Malfoy__7__._

_As I mentioned to you, I am always available to answer any other questions as they might arise. _

_I remain your faithful servant,_

_Harry J__8__. Potter._

1_ Honourable mention in _Witch Weekly

2 _We often 'discuss' things. Others might call this 'arguing'_

3 _Poses a series of philosophical questions in itself_

4 _Also 'arguing'_

5 _Unfortunately, from this point, I have had to reply on the reports of others, like your dad and that idiot Draco Malfoy_

6 _The artefact was an ancient dark magic detector we are investigating at the moment _

7 _I don't know what he was doing there that day, something suspicious no doubt_

8 _I imagine you have forgotten that the 'J' stands for James, after my father_

Of course, I didn't remember any of this. Not the coin toss. Not the artefact. Certainly not my best friend, the veracious Harry James Potter.

The first thing I remembered was "that idiot" Draco Malfoy, although I didn't know his name at the time. And I didn't remember all of Draco. Just his voice because my eyes were still closed and I guess you'd call me asleep. Or half-asleep, like when your alarm clock sounds and you manage to ignore it for a while. You hear the shower and the radio; you smell coffee and toast. You know you will wake; it's only a question of when, and of what or who will finally push you into day.

His voice was low and steady. I've always associated these types of voices with honesty, but I'm sure there are loads of low-pitched liars just waiting to take advantage of easy prey like me. Even semi-conscious, I lapsed into my prejudices and decided to trust every word Draco said: "Sir, my name is Draco Malfoy, and I am travelling with this woman. Unfortunately her family is not here, but I am her boyfriend." I didn't hear anyone argue with him. His tone did not allow for discussion. Someone took my hand and I opened my eyes. It was him, though I didn't know his face.

"Hello there," he said softly, "welcome back."

I did not stop to consider where I had been that required welcoming. I did not even ask myself why I was in the back of a magical ambulance with a man who said he was my boyfriend but whom I did not readily recognise.

As ridiculous as it might seem, I tried to smile but I doubt if he even saw. My attempt didn't last that long.

The pain came. The kind of pain for which there is no analogy; the kid of pain that allows for no other thought. The epicentre was concentrated in the area above my right eye, but it barely mattered; the waves through the rest of my head were almost worse. My brain felt too large for my skull. I felt like I needed to vomit, but I didn't. Without my having to tell him, Draco asked, "Could someone please give her some pain-reducing potion?"

A Healer shone a lit wand in my eyes. "Not until she's seen another Healer, maybe even had a full body check. But it's terrific news that she's already up. Just five more minutes, okay, Hermione?"

"Just five more minutes until _what_?" I asked, trying to sound patient. Until Christmas? Until my head exploded?

"Sorry. Until we're at St Mungo's," said the Healer.

At this point, the pain in my head was so strong that I wanted to weep. I probably would have, too, but it occurred to me that crying would make me feel worse.

"Are you positive she can't have any potion?" Draco yelled.

"Distract her; tell her a joke or something. We're almost there," was the Healer's annoying, unhelpful reply.

"I don't think that's going to do it," Draco retorted.

"Laughter is the best medicine, or so the Muggle's say," said the Healer. I believe this may have been his idea of a joke, but it did nothing for my headache.

"Complete and utter…" Draco leaned in closer to me. He smelled like smoke and laundered sheets left to dry in the sun. "…bullshit, but would you like a joke anyway?" he asked.

I nodded. I really would have preferred potion.

"Well, I can only think of one, and it's not very good. Certainly not pain-reducing good. So… okay, this man goes to St Mungo's and says, "My wife's insane; she thinks she's a vampire." And the Healer goes, "Well, why don't you just commit her?" And the man says –"

Just as he was about to reveal the punch line, a particularly impressive wave of pain pulsed through my head. My nails dug into Draco's palm, piercing his skin, making him bleed. I couldn't speak, so I tried to telegraph my apology with my eyes.

"No worries," Draco said, "I can take it."

In the emergency room, a Healer with eyes so bloodshot they make me tired just by looking at them asked Draco how long I'd been passed out, and he replied "twenty-one minutes," he knew exactly. He'd seen it happen. "At Law Enforcement, there are these steps at the entrance to the department. One moment, she's walking down them and the next; she's flying headfirst towards me like a Bludger."

"Is it strange I don't remember that?" I asked.

"Nope," said the Healer. "Perfectly ordinary to forget incident-associated narrative for a time." She shone a lit wand in my eyes, and I flinched.

At some point, another two Healers had joined the party, though I couldn't have told you when with any confidence. Nor can I recall much about them as individuals. They were an indistinct blur of pastel and white uniforms, like chalk doodles on a pavement in the rain.

The second Healer said she had to ask me a couple of questions, general ones, not about the accident.

"Your full name?"

"Hermione Jean Granger."

"Where do you live?"

"Chichester, Sussex."

"Good, Hermione, good. What year is it?"

"Nineteen ninety-one…?"

Even as I said it, I knew it wasn't right. Because if it was 1991, I would have been eleven, and I knew for sure I wasn't eleven. I didn't feel eleven. I felt… I couldn't say the exact number, but I just knew I felt older. Nineteen. Twenty. My body didn't feel eleven. My mind didn't feel eleven either. And there was Draco – Draco looked at least twenty, maybe older – I felt the same age as him, the same as him. I look from Healer to Healer to Draco to Healer; pokerfaces . All of them.

One of the Healers said, "Okay, that's fine for now. Try not to worry." This made me worry of course.

I decided the best thing for me to do would be to go home and sleep it off. I tried to sit up on the bed, which made my head throb even more intensely that it had been.

"Hermione, where are you going?" the Healer said. He and Draco gently pushed me back into a horizontal position.

The Healer repeated, "Try not to worry."

The other Healer paraphrased, "Really, you shouldn't worry."

As they walked across the room to some other patient, I heard the Healers muttering to each other all sorts of worrisome phrases: "mild traumatic brain injury" and "specialist" and "brain scan" and "possible retrograde amnesia". I have a tendency to deal with things by not dealing with them at all, so instead of demanding that someone immediately tell me what was wrong, I just listened until I couldn't hear them anymore and then decided to concentrate on matters more tangible.

Draco always said how ugly he was but I think he must have known that he wasn't. The only bad thing anyone could have said about him was that he was too skinny, but never mind that. Maybe because I couldn't seem to remember anything else, I felt I needed to memorise every single thing about him. His crisp white shirt had been unbuttoned slightly, and his black and silver tie had been loosened. He had tucked the shirt into black work trouser. His fingers were long and thin, like the rest of him, and a few of them were smudged with black ink. His blonde hair, which was almost white, was dishevelled and damp with sweat. Around his neck was a single leather rope with a silver and green ring on it, and I wondered if the ring was mine. His collar had been half-turned up.

I noticed blood on the inside of it.

"There's blood on your collar," I said.

"Um, it's yours." He laughed.

I laughed too, even though it made my brain beat like a heart.

"In the ambulance…" For whatever reason, the phrase "in the ambulance" embarrassed me, and I had to rephrase. "On the journey here, you said you were my boyfriend."

"Hmm, I hadn't known you were listening to that." He had this funny smile on his face and he shook his head a couple of times, as if in conversation with himself. He let go of my hand. "No," he said, "I just said that you were my girlfriend so they would let me travel with you. I didn't want you to be alone."

This was disappointing news, to say the least.

There's a joke about amnesiacs, which always reminds me of meeting Draco. It goes, "I'm an amnesiac – have we met?" It's not exactly a joke, but more of a "funny" slogan you might wear on a Muggle t-shirt if you were a) an amnesiac, and b) extremely corny, and c) probably had issues in addition to amnesia, like low self-esteem or the need to give "too much information" or just plain bad taste in clothes.

"You know something funny?" I said. "The first thing I thought about you was what an honest voice you had, and it turns out you were lying to me."

"No, not to you. Only to some jerk in a uniform," he corrected. "If I'd been thinking at all, I would have said you were my sister. No one would have questioned that."

"Except me, I don't have any siblings." I tried to make a joke out of it. If given the choice, I preferred being his imaginary girlfriend to being his imaginary sister. "Are we friends at least?"

"No, Hermione," Draco said with the same smile, "I can't say that we are."

"Why not?" He seemed like the kid of person it might be nice to be friends with.

"Maybe we ought to be," was all he replied.

It was and it wasn't a satisfactory answer, so I tried a different question. "Before, when you were shaking your head, what were you thinking?"

"You're really going to ask me that?"

"You have to tell me, I might die, you know."

"I didn't take you for the manipulative kind."

I closed my eyes and pretended to pass out.

"Oh, all right, but that's really low," he said with a resigned laugh. "I was wondering if I could get away with letting you think I was your boyfriend. And then I decided that would definitely be the wrong thing to do. It wouldn't be fair – you don't even know what year it is, for Merlin's sake. A good relationship is not built on lies and all of that crap.

"And, well, I also wondered if it would be wrong to kiss you – not on the lips, maybe on the forehead or hand – while I had the chance, while you were still thinking you were mine. And I decided that it would be very wrong and probably uncomfortable later on. Plus, a girl like you probably does have a boyfriend –"

I interrupted. "You think so?"

Draco nodded. "Definitely. I don't give a damn about him, but I didn't want to compromise you… or take advantage. I decided that if I ever kissed your, I'd want your permission. I'd want –"

And at that moment, my dad walked into the room escorted by the Muggle liaison Healer.

Draco had been leaning over my bed railing, but he stood up straight like a soldier to shake Dad's hand. "Sir," he said nervously, "I'm Draco Malfoy. I notified St Mungo's of your daughter's fall." But Dad pushed straight past Draco to get at me, and Draco was left with his palm in the air, the four puncture wounds my nails had made from grabbing him so tight.

The Healers returned then, followed by a Trainee, a Specialist, and an orderly who began wheeling me away without even bothering to tell me where she was taking me, and then I really had to throw up, and I didn't want Draco to have to watch that (I didn't want him to leave either), and somehow Draco slipped away without my seeing, which is something I would later find out he had a talent for.

Once I was admitted into a room, Dad passed the time by asking me if I was okay. "You okay, kid?"

"Yes, Dad."

Five seconds later, "Kiddo, are you okay?"

In an amazing display of restraint, I managed to reply "Yes, dad" three more times even though I had no earthly idea if I was. On the fifth or sixth time, I finally just snapped. "Where's mum?" She was better at Dad these type of situations.

"In the city," he said. He kept pacing the room and looking up and down the corridor. "Christ, is anyone ever going to help us? Honestly, you'd be better off in a _normal_ hospital…"

"Is she working?" I asked, ignoring the last comment. Mum had given up Dentistry to become a photographer and she sometimes had to go into London for that.

"Working?" Dad repeated. His head was sticking out the door like a turtle, but he pulled it back inside so he could look at me.

"She's… she… Hermione, are you trying to worry me?"

"Dad, are you messing with me?" Knowing my Dad, this was not an unlikely scenario.

"Are you messing with _me_?" Dad asked.

"I'm not messing with you! Just tell me where Mum is."

"In London." It sounded like slow motion. LUHNDUHN.

"Yes, London, but why?"

"She lives there, since the divorce. You can't have forgotten that."

I'm sure you've already realised that I had.


	3. i was: two

Everyone always says how much I look like her – my mother, I mean – which is ridiculous because she's half-Scottish and half-English. We both have hazel eyes, though so I guess this accounts for the misunderstanding. No one ever says I look like Dad, which is ironic because he is actually part Russian. The rest of him is English and Jewish, though he's not observant. All this makes everyone sound much more interesting than they actually are – my mum is a Brighton girl; my dad was born in Hayward's Heath, and they met at university of Southampton, where we lived until I was seven. They were both dentists, until Mum decided she'd rather do photography, and I know for a fact that in their respective surgeries there were pictures of me as a child in different outfits and in different cultures from our travels.

That's what popped into my head when Dad said they were divorced. In a strange way, I didn't feel like their divorce was happening to me, certainly not the "me" in that moment, the person lying in the hospital bed. It was happening to that little girl in the pictures. I felt sad for her, but nothing for myself, yet.

"Did it just happen?" I asked.

"Did what just happen?"

"The divorce."

"It's been six years and eleven months, but we've been separated for close to nine years now," Dad said. Something in his tone told me told me he probably knew the precise number of days, too. Maybe even minutes and seconds. Dad was a bit like that. "The doctors – Healers, they said you weren't sure of the year, but… well, do you think this is part of the same thing?"

I didn't answer him. For the first time, I allowed the possibility that I had forgotten everything from the past nine years.

I tried to remember the last thing I could remember. This turns out to be an incredibly difficult task because your brain is constantly making new memories. What came to mind was uselessly recent: my blood on Draco's collar.

I decided to make a more specific request of my brain. I tried to remember the last thing I could about my mother. What came to me was her "Sign of the Times" show, which was an exhibition of her photographs at a London gallery. She picked me up on the last day of year five, so that she could give me a private showing, before anyone else got there. The show had consisted of her pictures of signs from around the country and around the world; street, traffic, restaurant, town, theatres, bathrooms, signs that were painted over but you can still make them out, signs handmade by hitchhikers or homeless people, etcetera. Mum had this theory that you could tell everything about people (and civilisation in general) from the kids of signs they put up. For example, one of her favourite pictures was of a mostly rusted sign in front of a house somewhere in the woods in America. The sign said "NO DOGS, NEGROS, MEXICANS." She said that, regardless of the rust, it had communicated to her the clearest; "to take the picture and get the hell out of there." Most of her exhibit was more boring than that, though. As we were leaving, I told her I was proud of her because that's what my parents always told me when they came to see me in a school play. Mum had replied that she was "proud of herself too." I can remember her smiling before she started to cry.

"So, is Mum on her way then?" I asked Dad.

"I didn't think you'd want her here."

I told him that she was my mother, so of course I wanted her.

"The thing is," Dad cleared his throat before continuing, "I _have_ called her, but since you haven't really spoken to each other for a while, it didn't seem right that she come." Dad furrowed his brow. I noticed that he had less hair on his head than my brain was telling me he should have. "Do you want me to call her back?"

I did. I longed for Mum in the most primitive way, but I didn't want to seem like a baby or not like myself, whatever than meant. And Mum and I not speaking? It seemed so unbelievable to me and like more than I could even begin to figure out in my current state. I needed time to think.

I told Dad that he didn't need to call Mum, and his brow un-furrowed a wrinkle or two. "Well, that's what I thought."

About a minute later, Dad clapped his hands together before taking his pad and pencil out of his back pocket. He always carried them in case he should be inspired. "You should make a list of everything you don't remember," he said, holding the pencil out to me.

Although my dad is a Dentist, what he loves most is writing lists. Groceries, books he's read, people he's angry at, the list of lists goes on. If he could write lists for money instead of Dentistry, I think he'd be a happier person overall. I once said that to him, and he laughed.

My father is one of those people who believe that anything can be accomplished, the ills of the world cured, so long as it's written down and assigned a number. Maybe it's genetic, because I am most definitely not one of those people.

"So, how about it?" Dad was still holding the pencil out to me.

"If I can't remember it in the first place, how will I remember to put it on the list?" I asked. It was one of the most absurd things in a day of absurd things, as ridiculous as asking a person who has lost her keys where she had last seen them.

"Oh. Good point." Dad tapped his head with his pencil. "Brain's still working better than your old man's, I see. How about, as you hear things you don't remember, you tell me, and I'll write them down for you?"

I shrugged. At least it would keep Dad occupied.

"Thing's Hermione has forgotten," he said as he wrote. "Number one: her Mum's and my divorce." He held up the paper to show me. "Just seeing it written down, doesn't that make it all so much less frightening?"

It didn't.

"Number two," he continued. "Everything after the divorce. So that would be… 1992?"

"I don't know." I knew dad was trying to be helpful, but he was really starting to annoy me.

"Number ten. Your boyfriend, I'm assuming?"

"I have a boyfriend?" I thought of what Draco had said.

Dad looked at me. "Ron. He's still away on work business." He made a note.

My dad was up to nineteen when a Healer came into the room to wheel me away for my first of many tests. I remember feeling relieved that I didn't have to hear twenty.

I was in St Mungo's for three more nights. A rotating coven of evil Healers would wake me up every three hours or so by shining a wand in my eyes. This is what they do when you've had a head injury: all you want to do is sleep, but no one will let you. Besides not sleeping, the rest of my time was occupied by taking boring tests, ignoring my father's incessant list-making, and wondering if Draco Malfoy might take it upon himself to visit.

He didn't.

My first visitor was Harry Potter. Visiting hours began at eleven o'clock on Fridays, and Harry showed up at 10:54. My dad had gone outside to make a few phone calls, something that the Healer's found fascinating and irritating, so there was no one around to tell me who this young man in the brown corduroy jacket was. "Nice save, Chief."

I asked him what he meant, and he explained about my rescue of the 'artefact', whatever that was. "Not a scratch on it. Really going above and beyond the call of duty there."

Despite his questionable clothing choices, Harry was not the least big fussy or wimpy. When I asked him about the jacket, he claimed to wear it ironically, "as a way to entertain myself." He was compactly built, about my height, but solid-looking. He had scruffy black hair and blue eyes. He had a faded lightening-shaped scar on his forehead, and I felt as if I recognised it from somewhere. On that day, he had light circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were flushed. If he seemed loud or cavalier about my condition, I suspect now that it was a way of masking his concern for me. In any case, I liked him immediately. He felt comfortable and broken in, like favourite jeans. It probably goes without saying that Draco had had the opposite effect on me in the brief time that I had known him.

"Are you Ron?" I asked, remembering what Dad had said about my having a boyfriend.

Harry removed his circular-framed glasses and wiped them on his shirt. I would later learn that removing his glasses was something Harry did when he was embarrassed, as if not seeing something clearly could in some way distance him from an awkward situation. "No, I most definitely am not," he said. "Ron is about six inches taller than me, ginger, and my best friend. And also, he's your boyfriend." A second later, Harry's eyes flashed something mischievous. "Okay, so this is deeply wrong. I want it on the record that you are acknowledging that this is deeply wrong before I even say it."

"Fine, it's wrong," I said.

"Deeply –"

"_Deeply_ wrong."

"Good." Harry nodded. "I feel a bit better that you don't remember him either. He's probably not going to come to visit you."

"Leave, right now," I said in a mock stern tone. "You go too far insulting Ron… What's his last name?"

"Weasley."

"Right. Weasley. Yeah, I'm really outraged about you insulting the boyfriend I don't remember anyway."

"You might be later and if that's the case, I take it all back. He may be my best friend, but he's a bit of an idiot when it comes to women – when it comes to you. Anyway, visiting hours only started a minute ago, so he'll probably still come," Harry said, by way of encouragement I suppose.

"Dad said he was away on work business."

"If it were my girlfriend, I would have come back from _work business_."

"Who's your girlfriend?" I asked.

"Ginny. Your boyfriend's sister." Will chuckled and then stuck out his hand for me to shake. "Introductions. I'm Harry Potter; I work with you and Ron at the Auror office, where we are co-chiefs. Your dad said you might have forgotten some things, but I didn't think it was possible _I _might be one of them."

"Are you that memorable?" I teased. "Wait…"

"I'm waiting."

"I've read about Harry Potter. You're the boy who lived! The one who defeated Voldemort at the age of one!" I was stunned I was friends with such a famous wizard.

"Pretty much. Except I did it twice, again when I was seventeen. But we'll get to that later."

"Wow." It was a lot to take in. "Are we friends?"

"We're best friends."

"Wow," I said again. "My best friend wears a corduroy jacket?"

"I'm dressed for Muggle London. Seriously though, you can ask me anything, Honest, Chief, I know everything about you."

I looked into his eyes and decided to trust him. "How does my face look?" Since they'd magically healed up my forehead, I'd been basically trying to avoid reflections.

He examined me from both sides and then from the front. "Absolutely normal."

"Really?"

He nodded. "You're still insanely, unfairly, torturously beautiful, and that's the last I'm going to say about it, Chief."

"Thank you."

Harry leaned in close and whispered, "Come on, admit it. You really do remember me. All this amnesia crap is so you can get a break from work."

"How did you know? I just didn't want to hurt your feelings, Potter."

"That's considerate."

"So, what's my boyfriend like?" I asked him.

"Let's see. Ron Weasley is tall, ginger, heavy-footed, hilarious, kind, a bit of an idiot at times, friendly."

"How long have I known him?"

"Since the first day of Hogwarts."

Hogwarts. The last thing I remember is getting on the train at Kings Cross. So I must have forgotten everything after September the first, 1991. "How long have we been together?"

"Since May the second, 1998."

"That's precise, how do you know that?"

"Because it was the day of the final battle. Again, I'll get round to that later."

I decided to be patient and not press any further about the mysterious _final battle_. "What about Draco Malfoy, what's he like?"

"Malfoy. Yeah, I haven't seen him since the war, but he was fighting for the other side back then. You hate him with a vengeance. Well, you did until a few months ago, when you were forced to work with him." Harry sighed.

"Why did I hate him?" He didn't seem like the type of person I could hate.

"He was… he wasn't very nice to you at school."

"Oh."

"But, I saw him this morning outside Hogwarts and he was really polite. He's nothing like Ron Weasley." He paused. "Or me."

I was about to ask how _we_ met, but I was interrupted by the arrival of someone who made me forget Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley and Harry Potter completely for the time being.

"Hi, Mrs. Miles," Harry said to my mother.

"Hello, there, Harry. Could we have a moment alone?" My mother asked Harry.

Harry looked at me. "You'll be okay?"

I nodded.

"I should be getting back to the Ministry." He took my hand in his. "I'll Floo call you soon."

After Harry closed the door, neither I nor my mother spoke.

My mother is beautiful, and since I'm adopted you can know I'm not saying that as some sort of backhanded way of telling you how pretty I am. Besides, everyone says so. And she isn't beautiful in any of the clichéd ways. She's not tall and skinny and blonde with big breasts or anything. She's little and curvy and wavy light brown hair halfway down her back and almond shaped hazel eyes. It felt like I hadn't seen her in forever, I almost started to cry, but something kept me from doing it.

Mum, however, did not hold back. She burst into tears almost as soon as she got to my bedside. "I told myself I wasn't going to do that," she said. She mock-slapped herself across the face before taking my hand.

"Where were you?" I asked

"Your dad told me not to come, that you didn't want me. But how could I not come?" She looked at my face. "Your poor head."

She ever so gently stroked my brow, even though any evidence of injury had been magically vanished. I pulled away. I needed to know a few things first.

"You and Dad are divorced."

She nodded.

"But why?"

Dad came into the room then. His voice was hard as bricks. "Yes, tell her, Jean."

"I can explain." Mum's eyes started to tear again. "You were twelve and at Hogwarts when I ran into Nigel. It was just by chance."

"Who's Nigel?"

"Her old school boyfriend," Dad answered for her.

"Just by chance," Mum repeated. "I was waiting for the train, and it was the most random thing in the whole –"

I told her that I didn't want a story, only facts.

"I…" She began again. "This is so hard."

I told her that I didn't want adjectives and adverbs, only nouns and verbs. I asked her if she could handle that. She nodded and cleared her throat.

"I had an affair," she said.

"I got pregnant," she said.

"Your dad and I divorced," she said.

"I married Nigel and moved to London," she said.

"You have a seven year old sister."

"Sister?" It was a foreign word on my tongue, gibberish. Sisters were something other people had. "But I thought you couldn't have children?"

Dad whispered to my mother something about how he'd been trying to break this to me slowly, how I had already been through a lot. He had never mentioned a sister or Mum's pregnancy, which seemed odd, especially when you consider all his list-making. I wondered what else he'd been holding back.

"Sister?" I repeated. It felt even more made up the second time.

"Yes, her name is Chloe."

"Are we close?" I asked

"No, you refuse to see her," Mum said sadly.

I couldn't think of anything to say.

"It's probably a lot to hear all at once," Dad said.

"How are you feeling, cupcake?" Her voice was high and whispery. She sounded like she was floating away.

_How did I feel? _"About what? Which part?"

What I felt was that all these were very good reasons for us not to be speaking. It was one thing for Mum and Dad to be divorced, but for Mum to get together with her school boyfriend and have an affair and a daughter and a whole new family… "I feel like –" her eyes were wide and expectant – "I honestly feel repulsed.

"Hermione," Dad said.

"What?" I asked. "She is repulsive. Women who cheat on their husbands and get pregnant are repulsive. Why don't you add that one to your list, Dad?"

Mum stood up and started backing away from my bed, not quite able to look me in the eye. "I understand," she said, "I understand." Finally, Dad said that he thought she should go, which was funny because she seemed to be heading in that direction already.

"What happened to the Wandering Grangers?" I asked after Mum had left. That's what they called themselves, as we travelled so often.

"They wander no more." Dad tried to make a joke out of it. "The last trip was to Iceland. Do you remember that summer we went to Iceland?" I did. We had left right after Mum's exhibition. I was ten, and I used to say to say it was the summer without a summer, as it was so cold. "Hermione, are you crying?"

I guess I was. "I'm sorry," I said, and turned onto my side, away from Dad. I didn't want him to watch me cry. In all likelihood, the reason he hadn't already told me about Mum and Chloe was because he hadn't wanted to discuss it himself.

Whenever Dad said anything serious, he would usually undercut it with a joke. That was his style. When he and my mum used to throw parties, he always had a funny story and could make anyone laugh. My dad wasn't what you'd call shy, and yet he was. By himself, he was always a bit stingy with saying certain things. He rarely said "I love you." I knew that he did love me. He just didn't say it a lot. My mum was the one with all the "I love you's." But I understood what Dad was like because I was like that too. This was why I couldn't look at him.

"Why are you crying? Is it your head?"

The Healers had told us that with head injuries could be emotional, but it wasn't that. It was just… everything.

"It wasn't entirely your mother's fault. Mainly hers, but…" Dad laughed. "I'm kidding. Mostly."

I felt so alone.

"What is it? Tell your old man."

"I feel like an orphan." I was sobbing to the point that Dad couldn't understand me the first time and I had to repeat myself. "I'm an orphan."

It probably won't make any sense, but it was like my mother was less my mother than she had been before. Or maybe that I was less her child now that she had a new one. I was a vestigial daughter: an obsolete girl with an obsolete brain and an obsolete heart. I could hear my dad's breathing, but he didn't say anything and I still couldn't bear to look at him. I closed my eyes.

"Hermione?" Dad said after a while. "Are you asleep?"

I kept my eyes closed and let him think that I was.

He kissed me on my forehead. "I'll never leave you." He wouldn't have said this if he'd thought I was awake.


	4. i was: three

By Monday morning, the Healers had determined that I couldn't remember most things after September the first, 1991, which I'd pretty much known after that conversation with Harry, and they sent me home.

No one knew anything really; I was a mystery, even to the clever magical Healers. In their opinion, the head trauma wasn't severe enough to have caused the kind of amnesia I had, so they said I was probably _repressing_, or some such rubbish. Call me crazy, but I'm almost certain that it was the fall down the stairs.

They said my memory might come back, or it might not. And in any case, we should all act as if it wasn't going to. There wasn't anything to be done anyway. In a couple of weeks, there would be more pictures of my brain that probably wouldn't show anything. Therapy, maybe. Luckily, I could remember my magical ability, the things I've read in books, all the spells I had learnt. I just didn't remember when and how I learnt them.

"Rest," they said.

"And then?"

"Resume normal life as much as possible," they said. "Go back to work when you're ready."

"Maybe it will help you remember," they said. "But then again, maybe it won't."

"The human brain is mysterious," they said.

"Good luck to you," they said, handing me a sample sized bottle of pain-relieving potion and an excuse note for work.

I scanned outside St Mungo's for Dad's car, which in my last recollection had been a silver Ford Escort (Mum's) or a red Honda Civic (Dad's). I couldn't see either one. "Dad, do you think it's a bad sign that I don't know which car is ours?"

"I don't believe in signs," Dad said as he pointed to a compact white vehicle that was wedged between two other compact vehicles.

"You're joking. You loved that Honda!"

Dad muttered something about the new one being more fuel-efficient.

I got into the passenger's seat and put on my seatbelt. Just as we were pulling away, Dad's mobile phone rang, and he asked me if I'd mind if he took it. I said it was fine; after the Healer's near constant interrogation, I appreciated not talking.

Yes. Hello. Me too. I've been meaning to call you…" Dad said stiffly to someone. He seemed embarrassed to be talking in front of me.

"Who is it?" I whispered.

"No one. Work," He mouthed to me. He rolled his eyes and slipped on a headset.

I decided that I'd misread his tone and turned my concentration to the view outside. The trees were still green, but you could feel that summer was almost over. It made me think of a day I could remember, and how it had definitely been summer then. I didn't necessarily remember the trees, but I remembered the air that day. It had the newly-mown grass smell, where it feels like all of nature is just _sighing_ with relief. My parents and I had left for Iceland about a week later.

I wondered if Mum was having her affair even then. She must have been. She had said that her daughter was already seven. My mother's daughter. My sister. I couldn't think about that yet.

Out of the car window, and ninety minutes later, Chichester looked familiar enough. I noticed new houses and a large cinema. The place where they used to sell apple cider and doughnuts had been torn down. But basically, nothing much had changed, and this was reassuring.

All of a sudden, Dad turned down a road I didn't recognise. Even though Dad was still on the phone (what was so important that it required a ninety minute phone call?) I asked him where we were going.

Dad hung up before answering. "We moved," he said simply. "I should have mentioned it before, but there were so many things. I'll add it to the list when we get home. We're almost there."

His list was turning out to be a complete waste.

Dad informed that they had sold our house after the divorce. He had bought a different house about half a mile from our old one. He mentioned that the new house was "larger" (why we needed a larger house when fewer people lived in it was beyond me) and "closer to work" and "besides, we hadn't lived in the old house very long anyway."

The new house was much more modern than our old house had been. The back wall looked like it was made entirely from glass, and it was incredibly draughty inside. Our old home had been a two-storey, square, brick, semi-detached house. The new house was, well, new. It was on one level, and seemed more, I guess you might say, organised, if you were being kind. Sterile, if you weren't.

There were a few pieces of furniture or ornaments from the old house, but not many. At a glance I recognised a clay plant pot in front of the fireplace, a small braided rug near the laundry room, an iron umbrella stand. They all looked awkward and out of place, like orphans.

"What do you think?" Dad smiled. I could tell he was proud of his home.

I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I told him it was nice. Truly, there was nothing much to say. It was all very beige. The sofa was beige. The stain on the wood floor was beige. The walls were beige. What in the world can you say about beige?

To Mum, any reasonably flat or bare surface was a potential canvas, and she had always been painting and changing the colours of our walls. Our house smelled of paint, but also of all her other projects. Like melted crayons and clay and weird incense and glue and newspapers. Like people lived there and things were happening there. Like home. This new home smelled like… synthetic citrus. "Dad, what's with the weird scent?"

"Just something the housekeeper uses. I didn't like it at first, but now I'm used to it. It's organic." Dad sighed and then he clapped his hands together. "Okay, I assume you'll want the grand tour."

"Could we do it after lunch?" I told Dad I was really tired and he asked if I wanted to sleep.

"Could you take me to my bedroom?" I asked with a yawn.

"Of course, but you haven't slept there in a year," he answered. "You moved out last year into your new flat. But I had a word with the Doc – Healers, and they said to keep you here for a few weeks."

So I had my own home. It felt odd; although I felt older than eleven, I didn't quite feel old enough to have moved out.

Dad led me down the hall to "my room."

"Look at all familiar?" he asked.

Unlike the rest of the house, my room did share some similarities with the bedroom I remembered. The furniture, for one, was exactly the same. I practically wanted to hug my dresser, or give my chair a massage.

I told Dad I wanted to be alone. He had just been standing there, and I sensed he needed to be told to leave. Dad nodded and said that he had work to do, but that his office was down the hall if I wanted him.

"Oh, you'll need this!" Dad called just as he was about to go. He took the list out of his pocket. It was on five sheets of paper and one hundred and eighty-six items long.

"It's been lonely here without you," he said. He kissed me on the forehead, where my cut had been. I closed the door behind me and then I went to sleep.

Dad woke me for lunch and again for dinner, but the meals made no impression. I didn't really wake until around eight that night. I was alone for the first time in what felt like years, but had really been almost no time at all.

At the hospital I had basically avoided mirrors. It was easy. I just slipped past them, holding my breath as if there were a ghost in the room.

I told myself it was because I didn't want to see any injuries, but they had been healed within the hour I got to St Mungo's.

But every now and again I would accidentally catch a glimpse of myself. In a glass on my food tray, in the lenses of a Healer's glasses, in the window at night before all the lights were turned out. For a moment, I would not even realise who I was looking at, and, instinctively, I would turn away. It's rude to stare at strangers, and that is what I was to myself. I did not know the girl in the glass nor did she know me.

Now that I was finally alone, I felt braver. I decided that it was no time to reacquaint myself with myself. The meeting couldn't be put off any longer.

The first thing I did was remove all my clothes and examine my body in the mirrored closet door.

It was what I had been expecting. Even though I had lost nine years of memories, I had been never actually thought that I was eleven. I'm not saying that it's like this for other people, but this is how it was for me. I instinctively knew I was older. And although my body was surprising in certain ways, it looked more or less how I felt inside, so it was okay.

My face was a bit more shocking to me, because it looked like someone I knew, a cousin maybe, but not me. My hair was about the same, just past my shoulders, but it might have been highlighted, I wasn't sure. My jaw was narrower, my nose was sharper.

"Hello," I greeted myself. "I'm Hermione," The girl in the mirror didn't seem convinced.

"Anything you have to say for yourself?" I asked.

She stared at me blankly and said nothing.

I decided that mirrors were completely useless.

I found a t-shirt in my chest of drawers and put it on.

I opened my closet door. The person who lived in my room (for I could not quite think of her as me yet) was incredibly organised. It was as if she had been preparing for such an occasion.

I looked at my clothes Dad had moved from my flat to here. Several work uniforms: blouses, black trousers, pencil skirts. And then there were a selection of jeans, jumpers, cardigans for my everyday. In a zipped bag was a long, flowing purple dress with short sleeves and a fitted top for an event I could not recall having attended. I decided to put it on, just to see what it looked like. The dress was a little tight around my breasts. Evidently, I had grown since I had last worn it. I didn't bother zipping it al the way up.

I ran my hands along my hips. The fabric was silky and plush.

I wondered if I had worn my hair up or down. I wondered if had liked how I looked on that night and what my date had thought of me, if he'd said I was the most beautiful girl in the world. I wondered who my date had been. If it had been Ron or someone else. I wondered if I had brought me a corsage, and, if he had, what kind it had been. Had he known that I don't like roses? And if he'd brought roses, had I pretended to like him so that I wouldn't hurt his feelings? Maybe I hadn't gone with a boy at all? Maybe I'd just gone with a group of girls? Or a group of friends. Did I even have a group of friends?

Maybe I'd worn that dress somewhere else entirely? I wondered…

On the bookshelf under my window were several wizarding books. I remembered what they had inside them, but not having read them. I picked up my wand and ran it through my fingers, remembering how it felt in my hand. I gave it a swish and a flick and said, "Wingardium Leviosa." One of the books; _Hogwarts: A History,_ levitated a few inches. I smiled.

I went through the drawers of my bedside table. The most interesting thing I found was a plastic box containing birth control potion, which meant I was either a) having sex with someone or b) on the potion for some other reason. I also found my old diary, which I read through, smiling when I remembered the events I had detailed in my neat cursive. The last few pages were new to me, however. I had detailed friendships, worries about Harry, anger at Draco, confusion over Ron. I sounded like a complete know-it-all in the pages.

I wondered if the former Hermione Granger had been, in all likelihood, a complete and utter annoyance, someone that I probably wouldn't have even wanted to know.

I wondered…

I went through a rucksack I found on the floor beside my bed. I found a driving license, issued one year ago, a book on defence against the dark arts, and a pair of comfortable flat shoes. As I returned the license to my bag, I wondered if I still knew how to drive.

Also in my bag was a mobile phone, which was dead, so I plugged it into the charger and turned it on.

I wanted to call someone, but I didn't know who would own a phone except my Mum and Dad. I started scrolling through the numbers in the address book. I recognised most of them. I thought about calling Harry – apparently he had a mobile, which meant he was either muggleborn or was just knowledgeable in muggle studies. Maybe he knew about the birth control pills? I decided against it. Even if he was my "best friend," he was still a boy and I didn't want to ask him about that sort of thing.

Suddenly, I wanted to call my mum. Not because I thought she would know about the pills, I just missed her. I missed her like a reflex, even though I knew that I was just some trick of my undependable brain. Some stupid, vestigial part. The way humans have appendixes, even though they're pointless and mainly just a pain in the butt and people never even think about them unless they have to have them removed.

I didn't really want to talk to her, but I picked up the phone a dialled anyway. Of course I made sure to block the number in case she had caller ID or something. I knew I'd probably hang up, but I needed to hear her voice. Even if it was just her saying "Hello, who is this?" or breathing.

"Hello there," squeaked a precocious little voice, "you are speaking to Chloe Mills, and I have just learned how to answer the phone properly."

This was my sister. I hadn't been prepared for that, and for a second, I couldn't speak.

"Hellooooooooooo… is anyone there?"

"It's - Nobody," I managed to say.

She giggled. "Nobody. Nobody is a funny name. Do you like to read?"

"Yes."

"Have you read _Goodnight Moon_?"

"Yes." My mother had read it to me when I was younger.

"That's my seventh favourite book. It used to be the fifth, but it got too easy. It's still good. It has your name in it. There is a part where it goes "Goodnight, Nobody," and this is my second favourite part of my seventh favourite book."

I heard my mother's familiar voice in the background. "Is someone on the phone, Chloe?"

"It's Nobody!" Chloe yelled.

"Then hang up your phone, sweetie! It's time for your bath."

"I have to go now," Chloe said. "Bye-bye Nobody. Call again, 'kay?"

"Okay."

I hung up the phone and felt lonelier than ever.

All I wanted to do was sleep.

Which is what I did.

For about a week, maybe two.

It was easy to lose track of time.

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTES**

**Hey guys! Thanks for all the views (I've had loads!) But can you do some reviews? I'd really appreciate some feedback as this is my second dramione fic (I'm writing two at once) and I don't know if it's any good. Obviously there's dramione action later, but it's not going to be the stereotypical dramione fic, I don't think. **

**LOVE YOU ALL**


	5. i was: four

I woke suddenly: three sharp taps on my window. I was startled because my old bedroom had been on the second floor. In other words, no one could knock on the window unless they were riding a broom in a muggle neighbourhood.

I sat up in bed and pulled back the curtain. It was dark outside, but I could still recognise Ron Weasley. I had seen his picture in my purse and on my bedside table. In the flesh, though, he looked about as opposite of Draco as it gets. The contrast between my boyfriend and my pretend boyfriend was almost comical.

Ron was wearing jeans, like Draco had been, and a jacket that was similar. On Ron, though, everything was really filled out. Ron's hair was ginger and sort of shaggy. He was muscular. And handsome, I suppose, though in an almost cartoonish way. Everything about him seemed too broad, too big. If someone had asked me right at that moment, I would have said, "Definitely not my type."

I opened the window, and he swung himself over the frame. He knew how to throw his legs way out in front of him so they wouldn't hit the bookshelf under my window. The casual grace of his movements alerted me to the fact that he had entered my room that way many times before.

The first thing he did was kiss me. On the lips. And he didn't ask my permission either.

I couldn't recall him ever having kissed me before

I actually couldn't recall _anyone_ ever having kissed me before.

So, in a way, this was my first kiss.

He tasted like chocolate and spearmint toothpaste. His tongue was dull, directionless, and too much in my mouth. The nicest thing I can say about it was that it ended quickly.

He pulled away, but was still sitting on the side of the bed, "You don't really remember me, do you?"

"No, but I know who you are. You're my…" He looked at me hopefully, but I couldn't bring myself to say the word. "My…"

"Boyfriend," he finished. "Ron."

"Yes, my boyfriend."

"I'm sorry didn't come earlier. It's just… I was away on a mission with the Auror office and it was quite important and…"

"Really, you work at the Auror office? I do, too." I was just making conversation. I already knew that, of course.

"I know you do. We work together. You're good." All of a sudden, he smacked himself in the head, and the violence of it actually scared me. "I'm sorry! I should have left the mission early. I should have come!"

"It's fine, Rodd."

"The name's Ron," he whispered.

"I know that." I had no idea why I had called him Rodd. I knew his name, but I think I had been momentarily stunned by the self-flagellation.

He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Here, I got you something. I was at a shop in – where I was, and these reminded me of you." He pulled a package out of the bag he was carrying and passed it to me. I removed the paper and stared at it for a while. It was a pair of light pink fingerless gloves, with a pocket for my fingers pinned back with a button, so they could be turned into mittens.

I wondered what about me screamed _fingerless mitten gloves_ to him. Had he meant them as a joke? I could tell by his mouth – a thin pink line of determined patience and anticipation – that he hadn't.

It certainly wasn't the most romantic gift ever, but it was obvious that Ron had meant well, so I put the gloves on.

"Looks nice," he said. "With your, um, pyjamas. They have a warming charm over them, so you'll always have warm hands."

I walked over to my full-length mirror under the pretence of looking at my gloves, but what I actually did was study Ron's reflection. I was trying to work him out, and sometimes it's easier to do that when people don't know that you're looking at them. I watched him watching me. His eyes were tired, and he seemed pleased that I was wearing his gift. Maybe there was something wistful in his looks, maybe it was the potion in my drawer, but all of a sudden I realised that I was probably having sex with him. I also decide that I didn't want to have that conversation _just yet_; it was difficult to predict where such a conversation might lead.

Instead, I turned away from the mirror, walked across my bedroom, and kissed him again, like I could figure things out that way. His lips were soft, but his chin was sandpaper against my face, even though I hadn't seen any hair on it. After about ten seconds, which seemed like way too many, I pulled back. "So, thanks for these," I said.

"I'm sorry," he said, "about the way I came in. I shouldn't have kissed you. I should have let you kiss. I definitely shouldn't have used tongue. I, well, I panicked."

I told him it was okay, that these were confusing times or something like that. Then I asked why he hadn't apparated directly into my room, rather than climbing through the window.

"You used to get annoyed at me invading your privacy by just apparating in," he told me. "So, I apparate into your front garden instead."

I didn't say anything for a while.

"I have a headache," I said finally.

Ron took that as his cue to leave the same way as he'd come.

I closed the curtains. I was about to take off the gloves when Dad knocked softly on the door. "Oh, you're awake? I was just planning to slip out." I looked at the clock; it was already 9.30p.m.

"Where?" I asked.

"Just to get some coffee. We've ran out, and I'm probably going to be late filing old patient reports and things," he said. "Do you need anything?"

I told him that I didn't.

"I'll be back in half an hour," he said. "Nice gloves, by the way."

I listened to him close and lock the front door.

I listened to him back down our driveway.

Our house was so quiet.

I took off the gloves.

Even though I was still drained, I couldn't fall back asleep.

I decided to call Harry.

"Brilliant, your phone's back on," he said. "I wanted to call, but I thought I should let you rest." I let him ramble on about work and the letter he'd written me and some research he'd done about amnesia and whatever else popped into his head.

"How did I meet you?" I asked him when he'd finally paused for breath.

"I know this is going to be hard to believe, but we didn't like each other straightaway."

"No?" I said in mock incredulity.

"Indeed. I grew on you, and you grew on me. You're like that. But officially, we met on the Hogwarts express on the first day of first year. But you know, we didn't actually meet that day, not really. We just saw each other, exchanged names, and went on with our business. The first time I really met you was Halloween. Ron had hurt your feelings and you ended up in the girl's toilets with a troll. Long story short, Ron and I knocked out the troll, and you saved our arses."

"A troll?"

"Yep. Quirrell had let it into the school as a distraction when he attempted to steal the Philosopher's Stone."

"What?"

Harry explained the entire first year over the space of five minutes whilst I listened in wonder.

"And you were twelve when this happened?" I asked incredulously.

"Nope, I was eleven. I was twelve in the July after that."

"Wow."

Over the next twenty minutes, Harry explained every year at Hogwarts in detail, before stopping after the sixth year.

"What happened after that?"

"War."

I didn't question him any further. Although I felt a pang of _something_ for Harry, for what he went through with me and Ron, it seemed like a story.

"You should get to sleep, Chief. You can call me again tomorrow, if you want, if you're feeling up to it."

"Harry, can I ask you another question?"

"Anything."

"Would you say that I was really into Ron?"

"I truly doubt if I'm the best person to answer that."

"Who else, then?" I asked.

Harry sighed. "Honestly, I would say that you were. But you were friends for a long time before you got together, so you quarrel a lot."

"Why though? Why him and not somebody else, if we were friends?"

I heard Harry take a drink of water before he answered. "I'm not in your head, so I'm only theorising here, but I think the war thrust a lot of people together, and that's part of the reason."

I wondered…

All this speculation was exhausting. "Night, Harry," I said.

"Goodnight Chief. Do you think you'll be able to come back to work soon?"

"I don't know when I'll be back. I'm still pretty tired."

"Take it easy."

"I will."

I got under the covers and instantly fell asleep.

I slept for thirteen hours straight. I didn't even hear my dad come home.

The day before I was to return to work, I told Dad I wanted to figure out of I still knew how to drive.

"You're sure you're ready?"

I wasn't necessarily, but I was deemed to weak to apparate, and it didn't seem particularly appealing to Floo, or have my dad drive me everywhere, either.

"It's only been about three weeks. I'm not sure it's safe."

But I had to start figuring these things out.

We went out to the car. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. The movement seemed familiar enough.

I was about to step on the accelerator when Dad said, "You need to put the car into reverse."

"Oh, right," I said as I did it.

I was about to step on the accelerator for the second time when Dad said, "You'll want to look in the rear view mirror to see who's coming. Then over your shoulder to check the blind spot."

"Right, right." The road was empty in both directions.

I started to reverse the car. I had just eased my bumper out of the drive when a horn beeped three times. I slammed on the brakes as a van raced by, barely missing us.

"Moron!" Dad yelled, though surely no one could hear him except me. "A lot of people speed through this area. Don't worry about it."

But I was worried about it. I didn't feel that I knew how to drive anymore. "I should _know_ how to do this!" I banged my fist on the dashboard. Of all the things that had happened, this struck me as particularly humiliating. I felt childish and helpless and weak and stupid and suffocated. I hated that Dad or anyone else had to watch me be so pathetic. I needed to get out of the car.

I didn't even turn off the ignition. I just slammed the door and ran straight to my room.

Dad followed me. "Hermione, wait! I want to talk for a second!"

I turned slowly. "What?"

"I'm… you'll drive when you're ready. We can try again next week. No rush."

Dad's eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping, and he never slept much to begin with. "You look tired Dad."

Dad sighed. "I stayed up late watching a nature programme. It was about lemmings. You know how people used to think they all committed suicide when their population got too big?"

"Sort of."

"Turns out they have really bad eyesight."

"Since when do you watch those?" I asked. My dad was not really a "nature" person.

Dad shook his head. "I'm not sure. Since the divorce, I suppose. I'll drive you to work tomorrow, okay?"

I hadn't been dreading work, but only because I hadn't been thinking about it.

In St Mungo's, they had tested my cognitive skills and concluded that my brain was, aside from the memory loss, normal. Whatever normal meant. I could remember what I had learnt in Transfiguration, Charms, Defence against the Dark Arts, Arithmancy and the other subjects I had taken at Hogwarts, but I didn't remember the _actual_ lessons.

I could remember the content in my books on the shelf, but not _actually _reading them.

I could remember the skills I needed for my job, but not _actually_ working.

Some people with head trauma end up having months or even years of physical therapy where they have to be taught everything all over again – reading, writing, talking, walking, even bathing and going to the bathroom. Some muggles end up with their heads shaved or having to wear a helmet.

The main thing that worried me about work was not the job itself, but my colleagues. To look at me, no one would even think anything had happened – all I had was a story – but inside, I felt different. I worried about not recognising people and not acting the right way. I worried about having to explain things when I barely understood them myself. I worried that everyone staring at me and what they would say. This was why I'd tried not to think about work at all.

The next morning at the Ministry, most of the people who were rushing around looking young, like they'd just come out of Hogwarts. Dad had dropped me off at the staff entrance and I had curiously flushed myself in, feeling sick at the thought of travelling through a u-bend.

I had written a schedule on my hand this morning, and had a map to the Ministry in my pocket. I knew how to get into the department. Harry had told everyone I worked with about the accident. Why was it so hard to walk?


	6. i was: five

People were either staring at me or avoiding my gaze entirely. I was glad I had worn sunglasses because no one knew which way I was looking. I thought I heard people whispering my name, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Maybe I didn't even want to know what they were saying. Maybe they weren't saying anything. Maybe it was all in my head.

I hadn't mentioned to Harry or Ron that I was coming back to work that day. I hadn't wanted to make a big deal out of it. Walking up the steps of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, I sort of wished I _had_ told someone.

Once inside the main hallway, I scanned the crowd for a familiar face – Draco, Harry, Ron – but I didn't see anyone I knew. A few passers-by said hello to me. I smiled in return. I had no idea who any of them were. All of these people were strangers to me. I felt like the new girl. Actually, it was worse than that. I'd been the new girl before, and at least then everyone knows where you stand. They _know _they don't know you.

I walked down the hallway to where my locker supposedly was; number 13002. I tried the combination of wand-taps that Harry had given me in the packet with my schedule and map, but it didn't work. I tried it again. Still nothing. In frustration, I banged on the locker with my fist. Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

"You have to do a double-tap at the end," said an Indian-looking girl with long dark hair. She had on black worker boots with her robes, and I could see rainbow-striped socks barely peeking out over the tops of them.

I took her advice and the locker opened. "Thanks," I said.

"No problem, 'Mione."

The girl looked familiar, although I couldn't quite place her. "I know you," I said.

"I didn't know if you'd remember me. Everyone's heard about your head."

I explained how I could remember everything before September 1991, and some flashes of recognition from then on.

"Are we friends?"

"Mmm, not so much. We sort of drifted, I guess."

I thought about it. "Do we work together?"

"Nope. I'm more of a secretary." Parvati shrugged. "I have to go, though. I'll see you around."

"Bye."

I was wondering if we'd had a falling-out, or whether we'd drifted, as she'd said. I tossed my bag in my locker and slammed it shut. I looked down at my hair where I had written 'Meeting room A, 9a.m'.

When something happens, by which I mean something big like illness or death, there are some people who prefer to act as if nothing has happened. My boss, Kingsley Shackebolt, was not one of those people. While I didn't necessarily want anyone making a fuss, it was even more awkward when there was no mention at all.

Although my workmates had been informed of my condition, Kingsley Shacklebolt did not waste time asking how I was or anything like that. He did not feel the need to introduce himself either. I sat down next to a tall boy with glasses. He turned and held his hand out for me to shake.

"I'm Roger Patten. Potter got everyone up to speed on your condition. We were going to send a card, but you got back pretty quickly. Awesome glasses –"

"Mr Patten, why do I hear talking during the meeting announcements?" Kingsley asked.

"Sorry," I mouthed.

Roger smiled and shrugged.

As for the meeting, it was about the review of the seized artefacts from an abandoned Muggle warehouse that we had apparently taken in a week ago. Unluckily, I remembered none of it.

At the end of the meeting, Kingsley pulled me aside. "Miss Granger, I let you get away with it today," he said, "but it is not acceptable to wear sunglasses in a meeting."

I tried to explain about the wires in my brain and all of that, but you could tell he thought it was just an excuse. Maybe it partially was, but I still wanted to wear my sunglasses. I felt safer behind them. He waved his hand to dismiss me. "Don't do it again. And try to join in more next time."

I was due at my office to write up my report after the meeting, but nothing was coming back to me. But then, it didn't seem like anyone else knew much more than me. Plus, it was all written down in the official report, so I didn't think it would take too long to catch up.

I got lost going to the seized artefacts room, because it was held in a room just off the corridor that wasn't indicated on the map. When I finally got there, a ginger girl embraced me like a long-lost sister. I took that to mean we were close.

"Hermione, we were so worried about you!" Her hold was surprisingly tight for such a thin girl. She had bright eyes, and her hair rained down to her waist; long, straight and parted down the middle. Her badge said her first name was Ginny, and the name suited her: girlish, but old-fashioned; sweet and open like an apple. "Neither Harry or Ron told me you were coming back today!"

Ah, so she was Ron's sister, and Harry's girlfriend. I confessed that I hadn't told them.

She frowned at me. "Harry will be outraged. He stayed at home to work today – poor darling, he works way too hard – but I have half a mind to Floo him right now."

Ginny embraced me again before directing me to a pile of boxes to the left. The boxes were charmed to stop any spells from getting in or out, as the artefacts inside them could be dangerous. It was my job to test them for dark magic or enchantments, and cast the necessary counter-spell in order to deem them safe for storage. I could tell that this was the type of job they usually gave the new girl, but I enjoyed the simplicity of the task. At least I could remember the spells I needed to cast.

I tried to concentrate on what Ginny was saying, but I was too fascinated with the objects I was coming across. Every now and then, I had to take a seat and research the correct way to stop a particular enchantment, and the next thing I knew, Ginny was gently shaking me.

"Hermione, you poor girl, wake up!"

The boxes had all gone, and for a moment I forgot where I was. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologise. It's all finished. You looked so peaceful. I was considering letting you sleep even longer. Would you like to go to the on-call room for a quick rest?"

I really was exhausted, but I knew I'd better keep ploughing through the day. It wasn't going to get any easier. "That's a nice offer, but I should go," I said reluctantly.

"If you're sure…" Ginny studied me with concern. "I think of you like a sister, Hermione."

I nodded in gratitude, unsure what to say. "I think it's my lunch break now."

"Yes, it is." Ginny gave me a quick hug. "You may want to stop in the bathroom. A little bit of your schedule seems to have transferred to your face."

In the bathroom, I examined myself in the mirror. The backward stamp of my schedule was indeed on my right cheek. A quick spell later and it had gone, but in the process of doing that, I smudged the part that was written on my hand.

When I finally got to the break room, the lights were off because no one was in there. I took off my sunglasses but didn't turn on the light. It felt nice to be in the dark. I looked up at the enchanted ceiling, which looked like the night sky, with stars and galaxies twinkling down at me. It was beautiful, and reminded me of something.

The air was clean and fresh.

Me in a flimsy white dress.

With goose bumps on my arm.

A foreign land.

This feeling…

Like anything might happen.

I wondered if this might be an actual memory, and if it was an actual memory, was it mine? Or was it something from a book I'd read or a film I might have seen? Even when my brain had been perfectly functional, I had done that. Taken stories from books and conflated them with actual events. Not lying exactly, although some might call it that. More like borrowing. It is hard to explain just what I mean unless you're the type of person who does it too.

I turned my attention back to my lunch, which I had placed in front of me. I remembered a trip to the planetarium I had taken with my primary school in year four. One of the scientists had said something about how when astronomers first started studying the universe, it was like being in a room in the dark. But now with the new theories, they realised that it wasn't a room, but a house. Not any old house either, but a mansion with an infinite number of rooms to stumble through. I was imagining these scientists groping around a darkened mansion. I don't know why, but I pictured them as a group of drunken women, like they'd come from a party.

That was when a greying-ginger man walked in. He was about to flick his wand to turn the lights on when he saw me at the desk.

"Hermione! You're back" he exclaimed. "How are you feeling?"

"Tired," I answered truthfully.

"Of course, of course." He looked at me for a second before rummaging around in his back and producing a large packet. "I've prepared a package for you. It includes everything you need to know, our current cases, and anything extra I think you'd need to know for work."

I thanked him. It was nice to know that the school was not people entirely with Kingsley Shacklebolts.

"It's interesting, this. Why you have lost some things and not others…" He studied me, much like you would expect a Healer to watch a patient. "Maybe it's because you place different things in different areas of your brain. We know hardly anything about the brain, but the Muggles have made real progress with their scanning machines and sciences."

He certainly was an unusual wizard. I asked him what his name was.

"Oh, silly me! I'm Arthur Weasley. I'm Ron's father."

I wondered if all of the Weasleys worked in the Auror office.

"And nine years, is it? This is very odd. Maybe it is puberty onset that alters the place in which you are storing long-term memories? Or perhaps a traumatic event from your youth that you have been longing to repress?"

"Um, perhaps the war? I hear that was awful, and I was in the centre of it with Harry and Ron."

"Yes, yes, perhaps, it was horrific," Arthur said distractedly. "Forgive me, Hermione. I like to make theories for what cannot be readily explained. It's just my nature. Do you have any theories for your memory loss?"

"I lost a coin toss and I fell down the stairs. Bad luck and clumsiness?"

"Or, perhaps, randomness and gravity. In this respect, you're a walking physics experiment."

That was certainly one way to put it.

After Mr Weasley had left, I still had forty-five minutes left until I had to go back to work. Ron walked in with about fifteen others just as I was standing up, about to go back early.

"You didn't say you were coming today" He hugged me and lifted my backpack from my shoulder.

"It's fine, Ron, I can carry it myself. "

"I want to," he insisted.

I sat down again with the group on the long bench-like table. It was a mix of men and women, all around my age, and I recognised some of them from passing or this morning's meeting. You could tell that the people I ate with considered themselves to be the celebrities of the department. It was like they were putting on a show of having lunch as opposed to actually eating it.

A curly-haired blonde called Brianna introduced herself and the said, "I just want you to know how _brave_ I think you are. What happened to you is so, so tragic. Isn't she so brave?"

I didn't feel at all brave. Even though her words were ostensibly addressed to me, she seemed to be talking to Ron or the table at large.

She took my hand in hers. "It's strange because you look like yourself, and yet you're so different, Hermione."

"Different how?" I asked.

Brianna didn't answer. She had finished talking to me and was on to the next person.

Four or five people sitting nearest to me also introduced themselves. Some of the girls spoke too loudly, as if were dead. Others wouldn't quite look me in the eye. And then everyone just resumed _The Lunch Show _and ignored me, which was fine. I figured out pretty early on that these were Ron's friends, not mine. I wondered where Draco Malfoy sat – I hadn't seen him yet. Or Harry.

"Does Harry usually eat with us?" I asked Ron.

"No. He usually eats in his office."

In addition to being loud, the break room was kept at near-arctic temperatures, as someone had cast a cooling charm over it. I actually started to shiver. On the way in, I had noticed people sitting in the courtyard, which was bewitched to look like you were outside. I turned to Ron. "It's such a nice day, why don't we go and eat in the courtyard?"

Before Ron could respond, Brianna answered, "Um, I guess we could, but we always eat in here." Then Brianna and a girl whose name I couldn't remember giggled, like I had suggested we eat on Mars.

"It's true," Ron said with a shrug.

So I shivered through another ten minutes of lunch before telling him that I needed to get something from my locker.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Ron asked.

I shook my head and told him I was fine.

But I didn't go to my locker. I was simply tired of being cld. I walked out into the courtyard, but autumn was near and it felt even colder to me there.

I wandered the Ministry's atrium, before finding a small room off a corridor with three benches and hooks for cloaks. It seemed less cold in there so I sat on one of the benches in front what seemed to be a cruel experiment with sunflowers.

I was still contemplating the sunflowers when a familiar deep voice said, "You're shivering."

It was Draco. I decided not to turn around and look at him yet. I didn't want to reveal how pleased I was to see him again, especially considering that he hadn't visited me in hospital or at home.

"Maybe a little," I replied casually. "Is it cold in here, by the way? I have trouble telling."

"Not to me," Draco said, emerging in my line of vision with an unlit Muggle cigarette hanging from his lips. He placed the cigarette in his back pocket. "But that doesn't mean it isn't cold to you." He took off his suit jacket, which was black and expensive-looking, and handed it to me. "Here."

I put the jacket on. It smelled like cigarettes and cologne. "You smoke?"

"Now and then. Mainly to keep myself out of worse trouble."

For additional warmth I slipped my hands into his jacket's pockets. I could feel keys, a bottle of potion, a lighter, an inkpot, a few slips of parchment.

"I suppose I should have cleared out my pockets before lending you my jacket," he said. "What's in there?"

I gave him my report.

"Nothing too controversial, then."

_Depends on what the potion's for, _I thought. "Depends on what the keys are to," I said.

He laughed at that. "My mother's house."

Distantly, I heard a horn that told me that I had to get back to work.

"You're still shivering," Draco commented. He loosened his tie and took off his shirt. He had a t-shirt on underneath. "Put this on under the jacket. You'll be warmer."

"Are you sure?"

He said he had another shirt in his locker. His arms were slim and muscular, but not like a man who worked out. I noticed a two-inch horizontal scar across his right wrist. I wasn't sure, but it looked like the kind of mark you'd get from trying to kill yourself with a blade rather than a wand. He saw me looking at it. He didn't cover it up, but he didn't choose to explain it either.

"You're going to be late," he said.


	7. i was: six

I looked at my hand. I had a meeting with the French Minister for Magic in meeting room-; the number had smudged during the course of my morning ablutions. I held out my hand for Draco to read. "You wouldn't happen to know where this is, would you?"

He held my hand like a book. After he'd read it, he closed his hand around my palm and offered to take me himself.

I liked the way his hand felt over mine. It might have been my imagination but I thought I could still feel the faintest of scabs on his palm from where I'd grabbed him so hard three weeks ago.

He dropped my hand almost as soon as he grabbed it. When he spoke, his voice was hard and business-like. "Come on, we'll be late."

I had barely kept up with him as he led me through the corridors, but then, at the meeting room door, he lingered. I thought he might say something to me. All he wanted was his jacket. "My jacket," he said, rather testily for someone who had been so quick to take it off in the first place. I removed the jacket and was about to take off his shirt, too, but he repeated the thing about having another. "You should really dress more warmly," he said before rushing off without a single glance over his shoulder. I stood there, cold again, and feeling bad that I hadn't had time to thank him for his help at the hospital.

I had forgotten nearly all of the French language which actually made the meeting unintentionally fascinating.

"Bonjour, 'Ermione!" the Minister said, shaking my hand energetically.

"Sorry, hello, erm, Minister…?"

"Ah, don't worry, my friend!" the Minister said with a smile. "I 'ave been told about your… head. Ca va?"

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Ca va très bien, merci. Et toi?"

"Good, good!" the Minister exclaimed. "Shall we begin, gentlemen? And ladies. You don't mind if we talk in French, non? I know very little English."

The meeting lasted for an hour, during which time I only picked up a few words and phrases I recognised. Luckily, a quill had been charmed to record the meeting, which meant I could read it at a later date, perhaps using a translation spell.

After the meeting, the other Aurors were called out on a small mission in North London, which Hermione was excused from. She spent the ninety minutes sleeping. The last half an hour of the day was dedicated to the filing and sorting of the day's parchment. The person in charge of the filing room was Mr Weir. He didn't look very old to me but he was completely bald. Whether it was elective baldness or compelled, I couldn't determine. He wasn't wearing robes but rather a t-shirt and a pin-striped blazer. When I came into the room, he introduced himself. "I'm your favourite person here, Mr Weir. Fierce shades." I liked him immediately. "You usually sit over there," he said helpfully, pointing me to a table in the back.

The filing job was for the people who didn't get allocated the 'better' jobs but according to Mr Weir, I was there because I enjoyed it. I still don't know whether he was telling the truth or not. It seemed like an easy job to me; something to do at the end of the day to wind down and still get paid for it. It was also something I could put off doing for a few days if I needed to.

On my way out of the room, Mr Weird asked if we could talk. "I don't know if I should mention this to you, but you came to see me in the summer. You told me you wanted to drop the filing duty."

"Why?"

"You said something about other commitments, but I'm not really sure. That may have been an excuse, so as to not hurt my feelings. Of course, you can still drop the job if you want, but I'm always happy to see you."

I asked him what my other commitments were, but he didn't know. The one part of my job that I had actually managed to complete efficiently and quickly I hadn't even wanted to continue. Who could make any sense of it?

At least the day was over. Each part of my job had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if work had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everyone.

I decided to go to the bathroom. Not because I actually had to go, I just wanted to be alone.

I was sitting in the cubicle when I heard Brianna come in.

She was talking to someone with her.

She was talking about me. "Oh, I know it was so awkward at lunch," I heard her say. "I mean, she looks the same, but she's not all there. She used to be so…" She sighed. "But now…" her voice trailed off. "It's so tragic. So tragic. And you know who I feel sorry for? Ron."

The other girl with her agreed.

She was an idiot, but I didn't necessarily want to confront her either. What would I say? Besides, she was probably right. I stayed in the cubicle until she left.

To tell you the truth, I found the whole thing depressing.

I was still sitting there when my phone rang. I hadn't even realised it was on. I looked at the display. It was Harry.

"Don't tell me you're at work," he said.

"Unfortunately," I answered.

"Now I'm annoyed. Gin Flooed me, but I didn't believe her. Why didn't you mention you were coming back today? I would have come in."

"I was told that you're sick."

"Nothing major." Harry said he'd had a scar when he was younger and now he had "this headache thing" that sometimes acted up, so he'd stayed at home. "But I would have shown up for you, Chief. And I'm here now anyway."

"If you're not feeling well, shouldn't you still be at home?"

"I never miss the Auror after-hours meetings," he said. "You don't either. Where are you? I'll come get you right now."

"Sure, Harry. I'm in the ladies'. Come on in."

"Um… you're not serious?"

"No, I'm not."

Harry laughed. "Right how about I met you at the meeting room, then? It's the one next to the one you were in for the morning's meeting. You should call your dad to let him know you're with me."

"Hey, Harry?" I asked.

"What?"

"How come I was going to drop the filing duty?"

"Filing, filing. Okay, I think you said it was because you thought that the big Auror project was going to take up too much of your time, so you wouldn't have a chance to do the filing. That's it, I think."

I could tell he was leaving something out. My dad always says to listen for the pauses when you want to know if someone's hiding something. I asked Harry if there was anything else.

"Well, I'm theorising here, but your mother's husband, Nigel, does the same sort of thing at his company. You only just found out what he does for a living… and I don't think you liked doing the same as him. So maybe that was the problem."

I didn't say anything, but it sounded like the truth. "I'll see you upstairs."

The few Aurors cheered for me when I entered the room and everyone shook my hand and patted me on the back like I was some kind of hero. Someone held up a small round object that turned out to be _the artefact_, and said that I should have my picture taken with my old nemesis. They rounded up a camera and I pretended to be having a fistfight with the artefact, which made everyone laugh. I felt a little overwhelmed and maybe even touched, because it was clear how much these people really did like me, as opposed to the ones I had to eat with in the break room.

All of that was wonderful, until I started to realise what the actual business of after-hours Auror meetings entailed. It amounted to collecting artefacts that no one else was really bothered about, researching ways to make the office more efficient and going to conferences about magical law enforcement. All of this required an endless series of meetings and debates. I wondered why in the world it could possibly take so much time, money and effort to do a little extra work.

The meeting lasted until around seven o'clock at night. There were schedules to arrange and artefacts to research. On the way out, I asked Harry how often we met each week. He laughed and said, "You're kidding, right? We meet every day. Some weekends, too."

I did the maths. That amounted to ten (plus) hours a week of after-hours work, not including weekends or conferences. Over seven hundred and twenty hours a year.

Any way you looked at it: a lot of time.

I hoped that I would get my memory back, so that I would remember what I had liked about after-hours in the first place. I didn't want to let all these nice people down.

On the walk back to the atrium, Harry couldn't stop talking about after-hours. The man was obsessed. I mainly found myself ignoring him. I'd nod every now and again and that seemed to be all the response that was required on my part.

I wanted to ask him why he (I) liked after-hours meetings so much, but I thought it might hurt his feelings.

"You're really quiet," he said.

I told him I was tired, which I was.

"I've been talking too much," he said. "I just got excited that you were back. It's not anywhere near as much fun without you, Chief."

We were halfway to the fireplaces when I spotted Draco Malfoy. I asked Harry if he would mind stopping to chat and he replied, "The guy looks like he wants to be by himself."

I reminded him how much Draco had helped me in the hospital and how I had never had a chance to really thank him. "Plus," I added, "he was nice enough to return the artefact." I knew the last part would definitely get to Harry. He sighed like it was really putting him out and muttered something about date night with Ginny, so I told him he could just go on ahead, that I'd walk the rest of the way on my own.  
"Yeah, right, I'm really going to leave my injured friend in the middle of the Ministry," he said.

Hermione called Draco's name. "Do you want to walk with us?"

He turned very slowly and for a second after he saw me I was pretty sure he was just going to keep on walking. Finally, he ambled over to Harry and me. He didn't look too enthusiastic about seeing me again. I was starting to wonder if I had hallucinated the man I met in the hospital.

"Still cold?" he asked politely.

"A little," I replied. "Your shirt's in my locker."

Draco shrugged.

I was about to say how I'd been hoping we'd run into each other again when Harry cleared his throat loudly. He edged himself between me and Draco and stuck out his hand. "Malfoy, nice to see you again after bumping into you at Hogwarts. Thanks for dropping off the artefact, by the way. Hermione's researching it in the after-hours meetings, not that you asked."

"I didn't know that," Draco said. His mouth threatened to smile for a second. "Well, it was good seeing you both."

"The thing is," I said. "I was hoping I would run into you again. I didn't get a chance to thank you for all your help at the hospital."

Draco cut me off. "Really. Don't mention it," he said. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and turned to walk away.

"What's his story?" I asked.

"It's long and complicated," Harry sighed.

"He was a bit rude, don't you think?"

Harry shrugged. "He's just like that."

I glanced at Draco again, who had walked halfway up the corridor. "Hey, wait!"

Harry sighed again as I half-jogged to catch him up.

Draco stopped and turned. "What?"

"I want to walk with you," I told him. Draco nodded and continued walking, taking off his jacket as he did so. I saw the ring again. "What's the ring?"

"It's my father's," Draco said, slipping the ring under his t-shirt.

"Why isn't he wearing it, then?" I asked.

"Hermione –" Harry started.

"It's fine," Draco interrupted. "My father's in Azkaban for being on the wrong side during the war.

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."

Draco shrugged and said something about it not being anyone's fault. It was clear to me that he didn't want to talk about it, so I changed the subject. "I've been thinking. You never came to visit me at St. Mungo's.

"Yeah… I don't really like hospitals."

"I was waiting," I said, looking at him. "And you could have visited me at home, too." My sunglasses slipped down the bridge of my nose and Draco reached to push them back up. He let his finger lightly graze the space about my brow before returning his hand to his jacket pocket.

"Does it still hurt?" Draco asked.

"Not too much," I replied.

"Do you remember what happened?" he asked.

"Nope, she doesn't know anything past September 1991," Harry answered for me, which was annoying. He was behaving rather badly.

"That's not entirely true. I do still remember books and spells."

"What more is there in life?" Harry quipped.

"I've just forgotten everything else," I continued. "I'm basically a blank slate."

Draco laughed. "Lucky woman."

"I don't see what's lucky about it," Harry grumbled.

"Aren't there things you'd rather forget?" Draco asked him pointedly.

"No," Harry said. "Even after everything… it's made me who I am today. If I was Hermione, I'd be screaming."

"Well, are you?" Draco asked me.

I thought about it for a second before shaking my head. "Not really. There's nothing I can do about it, is there?"

Draco nodded. "That's a good attitude. I still get pissed off with things I can't do anything about."

_Like what?_ I wondered, but didn't dare ask. "My memory might still come back."

The fireplace Draco needed to use was down the other end of the atrium. Harry told me he lived in a manor house that had been in his family for generations. He had no neighbours, and I wondered if he got lonely sometimes.

"I probably would have been even more scared if you hadn't been there. I didn't get a chance to tell you before," I said to Draco as he was about to leave.

"I'm glad I could help," he said.

"I wanted to Floo call you, or something, but I didn't want to impose. So, well, thank you." I reached out to shake his hand.

"How formal," he said. He surrounded my palm with his other hand before gently squeezing it.

We seemed frozen in that handshake before Harry cleared his throat again.

"I think Potter wants to go," Draco said. He let my hand drop and said coldly, "I should go, too."

I decided not to take Draco's sudden changes in temperature personally. Some people were like that. He'd been kind to me when I'd needed someone and to expect anything more would be unreasonable. I'd thanked him and that was enough. Besides, I already had a boyfriend.

As we walked closer to the fireplace we needed to use, Harry asked me what took so long.

I said how I'd been thanking Draco again.

"Malfoy's a dangerous man," Harry said quietly.

I asked him specifically what he meant.

"Well, from what I've heard, he's back in London again because he went a bit crazy over a girl at his old work."

I asked him what specifically he meant by crazy.

"Like stalking her and making threats. That kind of crazy. Malfoy's family are very powerful, so he usually gets what he wants. When he didn't, I think he went a bit… odd," Harry informed me.

Draco didn't seem the type to me. If anything, he was overly respectful. Plus, he had that trustworthy voice. "How do you know it's true?" From what I could tell, everyone at the Ministry just liked to gossip about everyone else.

"I don't," Harry admitted.

It was my turn to Floo. "Harry, why do we like after-hours so much?"

About a million colours passed over Harry's face. He began by sighing and that turned into a laugh. His brow furrowed for a second and then his blue eyes began to cloud.

"Is it a hard question?" I asked him.

"No, it's probably ludicrous… I just hoped it might be something you would remember on your own. I know it might seem pointless to some people, but we both really believe in what we're doing. I'd say you even more than me. To us, it's not just more work after five o'clock, it's like we're a part of something again. It feels like the early days of Dumbledore's Army, when we felt like we could achieve anything. We take care of the little bits and pieces that no one thinks is necessary. If you think about it, it's a huge responsibility."

"Good speech," I said sincerely.

"I've given better. We used to talk about things we'd do when we were finally running the Ministry; the good guys. How we'd make sure everyone's job was important and the littlest things wouldn't get overlooked. How we'd make it democratic and personal at the same time. The only thing we worried about was being the boss of each other, so we applied to be co-chiefs. And here we are."

I nodded, but truthfully, I had found Harry's whole speech disheartening. I could see and hear his conviction and, in contrast, I felt none of that. Maybe I had in the past, but I didn't anymore.

I said farewell and Flooed to the shop around the corner from my house which I was told about by Ginny. It was my first time Flooing that I could remember.


End file.
